Collected Novels and Plays

by James Merrill

  This didn’t keep you from going to her parties.

  “Stay with me, Francis,” Lady Good begged, taking his arm to walk the weedy path. Already some fifteen cars were parked on what passed for a lawn, and the small house, buzzing with talk, had swallowed up Mr. Tanning and Natalie under their very eyes.

  Francis, as it happened, had stayed with her the better part of the day, since her coming upon him early in a fine sunny haze beside the sea. All but ignoring his greeting, Lady Good had embarked on what he later saw to be a single inexhaustible conversation. Little had he reckoned, with his graceful naming of Mr. Tanning as their likeliest topic, the reaches of her interest.

  She had wanted first to make her position clear. Francis was not to infer, from her presence at the Cottage, any resemblance between herself and the other women there. Her marriage to Sir Edward had been, still was, full of comfort and mutual esteem. If Benjamin had brought—she threw up her hands at the word—“romance into my drab life, who am I not to enjoy it like a schoolgirl? I’m very sentimental, Francis. Ned isn’t, not one bit. He’s far too busy for that, although I’ve sometimes asked myself what he’d do, the poor man, were I not there.” Had she really? Wondered Francis to himself. It put her friendship with his father on a more complicated footing. Oh, Mr. Tanning loved her—Mr. Tanning loved everybody; but here was an inkling of the possible depth of Lady Good’s own feeling.

  Throughout their talk she remained highly dignified. No one could have doubted that the affair was platonic.

  Leading Francis back down the beach, she had gone on to describe her first meeting with Mr. Tanning, through mutual friends in Jamaica. It took place after he had moved away from the Cheeks’ and into the beautiful old plantation house, Weathersome, which he had bought a few months later—such a truly beautiful house, she sighed, high on a hill, surrounded by trees, eucalyptus, palm, manchineel, and such flowers! Inside, wonderful gleaming floors, chandeliers, decorations in plaster that were the work of genius! She hadn’t wanted to go, that first time. Mr. Tanning was American and well-to-do; it followed that he would be insufferable. Lady Good hadn’t, moreover, been invited, and it simply didn’t amuse her to barge in on strangers. How little a stranger she found him, after a brief hour in his company, was still a source of amazement. “Not that it should be,” she told Francis, “for of all the charming men in the world Benjamin’s surely the most charming, and the sweetest, and the saddest. Why, he needs affection the way a child does!”

  Affection, the capacity for feeling and showing it, led her finally to speak of Irene. In fact she was still speaking of Irene now, as they entered her house. Lady Good felt very sorry for Irene. “One has to face it, Francis, she simply isn’t your father’s intellectual equal.”

  By then Francis had begun to feel very sorry for Lady Good. Though equipped with a few intellectual advantages of his own, he’d never found them useful in his father’s circle. And though Vinnie Tanning was still proud of her last withering retort—“Kindly tell me what you and Fern are going to talk about!”—the mot hadn’t kept Benjamin from marrying dear mindless Fern. Nor would Lady Good’s intellect save him from Irene.

  Oddly enough they collided with Irene in the hall. “A drink just spilled on Natalie,” she said, extending a dripping hand to each. “Go on in. I’m scurrying for a towel.”

  They obeyed. Mr. Tanning was already seated across the room, talking to a florid man with wavy white hair—Mr. Bishop, evidently. In a corner, unnoticed by them, Natalie, vigorously shaking her head, rejected napkins and handkerchiefs. Small aimless groups stood by. From under a table two beagles peered expectantly. Francis could see Irene having spoiled Natalie’s dress on purpose, hoping to draw everyone together by means of some lively incident.

  Cut-glass bowls had been piled with potato chips or nuts enough for a hundred people. It promised to be just the kind of formless party Mr. Tanning hated.

  A dapper, fattish little man, black-browed, gray-templed—the face of one who has never worked in his life—hurried up to Lady Good and seized her hand. Francis recognized him a moment later: Charlie Cheek. He had aged ten years during the past three. He asked what they wanted to drink.

  “What are you drinking?” asked Francis thoughtlessly.

  “Oh I’m on the wagon,” his host replied. “Haven’t touched a drop for six whole years. This is ginger-ale.” He hadn’t, at least, said wormwood; in fact Mr. Cheek appeared to enjoy the role of an alleged cuckold. While pouring her sherry he kept beaming at Lady Good with clear brown doglike eyes. How nice to see her, how was Sir Edward? Yes, yes. In Washington? Well, well. Probably Charlie knew better than anyone how his wife could behave, and was trying to make up for it.

  Irene, reappearing, fussed over Natalie with a towel.

  “Don’t bother about me, pet,” Natalie said. “Introduce Francis to some of those pretty gals.”

  So he gulped half his cocktail and let himself be led away, under the reproachful eye of Lady Good—though, as he told her later, he would have preferred to stay at her side.

  Francis had known most of the pretty gals before. They had been his playmates at the Beach Club, at afternoon birthday parties, at dancing school. They had thrown sand into his eyes and he had put gum in their hair. One of them (now “little” Mrs. Drinkwater, twice divorced) had followed him behind a hedge, to watch him urinate. He had thought it funny to wet the front of her dress, but she ran screaming to her nurse and Francis was taken home and spanked. Ginny Neale, yes, that had been her name. She seemed, today, to have forgotten the episode. She had very sleek red hair and wore gold bracelets on her lightly freckled arms. “I’m dead to go back to France,” she said through her nose, “but I’m stuck with my heaven child.” Another girl, “big” Matilda Gresham, had given away all her dolls on her tenth birthday. She drank beer and gruffly told Francis about working last winter for a theater group in the Village. “Tilda’s always been a daredevil,” her mother joined them long enough to explain. “She can’t abide League work. I beg her just to try Palm Beach one more season, but do you think she listens to me? People wonder what she does—I tell them I don’t know.” Mrs. Gresham (Boopsie) gave a bright drunken smile. Years back, during a great luncheon at the Cottage, she had grasped Francis’s wrist and asked a passionate question: “Do you now, looking straight into my eyes, dare to deny the ethos of the Anglo-Saxon race?”

  She lingered to speak of his mother. This showed that Mrs. Gresham, like Matilda, was no slave to fashion. She had her loyalties, however rarely she exercised them—“I haven’t laid eyes on Vinnie for years but I’ve always loved her. I don’t care who hears me say it.”

  “She’s very fond of you, Boopsie,” Francis improvised.

  “Really, Boopsie,” said her daughter crossly, “is your mind utterly gone? We had a long talk with Mrs. Tanning two days ago, in front of the five-and-ten. She told us Francis was back.”

  “That will have been Fern,” he said. “My mother is Vinnie.”

  It turned out to have been Harriet. She had driven over from Sag Harbor to have lunch with Enid and buy something for the people she was staying with. Place mats, Mrs. Gresham believed.

  Matilda snorted. “You think my friends on Christopher Street have mixed-up lives.”

  “Darling, I want you and Francis to see each other this winter. Remember what fun you had when you were little!”

  Matilda remembered having pushed Francis, fully clothed, into the pool. He remembered having entreated her to do so.

  “Call that fun?” said Ginny Drinkwater.

  Mrs. Gresham’s eyes misted over. “I never had fun till I was fifteen,” she sighed.

  “Are you going to work for your father, Francis?” a dark girl asked.

  “No, I think actually …” But they were all gazing at him with pretty interest, and he had no further ideas.

  “Now why not, Francis?” demanded Mrs. Gresham. “It would please him so.”

  “Well, doesn’t his own example,�
� said Francis flippantly, “show us that we must first of all please ourselves?”

  Did he imagine the exchange of glances provoked by this? “Please ourselves, Boopsie?” the young women appeared to wonder. “We do it constantly, but do we ever say so?” And Mrs. Gresham, mistress of herself, flashed wordlessly back, “That is right.” Once she had been something of an arbiter in the community; even now her presence did much for the tone of any gathering. Irene was smart to have made a friend of her.

  “Isn’t it good to see Benjamin looking so well?” said a blue-haired lady with her arm in a sling. “Irene told me he was coming, so I’m carrying the bag he sent me last Christmas. Isn’t it swanky, Boopsie? It’s from Tiffany’s.”

  “I know,” said Mrs. Gresham. “I got one, too. Mine’s suede.”

  The ladies smiled guardedly—were they rivals or accomplices? From far off, Mr. Tanning, his head bent, a handkerchief to his mouth, had the air of a Parsifal caught by the scent and twitter of aging doxies. As Francis himself was.

  “Tell me,” whispered the newcomer, “is that the Englishwoman, talking to Charlie Cheek?”

  “Lady Good?” Mrs. Gresham gave an apologetic laugh for Francis’s benefit. “I can’t say I’ve really met her ….”

  “You could say you haven’t,” Matilda put in.

  “True, darling. But,” her mother suavely pursued, “Irene’s been singing her praises—”

  “Has she really? Why, I thought—”

  “Singing her praises, Nell.” Then, while the blue-haired lady’s face slowly emptied itself of malice: “You like her very much, too, don’t you, Francis?”

  “Oh, this is Francis!” drawled the other, understanding her mistake. “I’d never have known you! How naughty of Boopsie!” She revealed herself as the Mrs. Sturdevant who had run off with her brother-in-law and never been asked anywhere till after his death, when Mrs. Gresham, deciding that she had suffered long enough, championed her at a quiet dinner.

  It was that kind of party. Irene had summoned all her allies. You felt even Mr. Bishop had been used, to procure Benji’s attendance at the spectacle of her popularity.

  An extra man of many summers’ standing was admiring her jeweled tennis racket. “You never seen that?” she laughed, tossing her hair. “Why, it’s from my favorite fella! Charlie Cheek gave it to me on our tenth anniversary.” Though Francis didn’t doubt her word—the thing was too ugly to be a gift from anyone but her husband—an unlucky falseness in her tone caused some to glance, involuntarily, at Mr. Tanning.

  Francis gritted his teeth. “Irene,” he said, “Did you leave Daddy’s bridge winnings in the ocean room? Because they weren’t there when he looked, and one hates to accuse a servant—”

  “Oh dear!” she cried with a look of loathing. “I understood I was to keep the money! How embarrassing! I’ll speak to him now!”

  He had gone too far. “There’s no hurry, is there?” Smiling casually, Francis tried to lead her out of earshot. “The poor man forgets so much. He just didn’t remember—though I do, of course—that part of it. It was all so vague, perhaps he would remember now.”

  “Well,” she glared, “it’s something we ought to clear up, Francis, don’t you agree?” Irene was really forcing his hand. He saw her ready to carry her grievance to Mr. Tanning, and get for herself some public commitment from the old man.

  “By all means. I know as well as you,” his confidential manner deepened, “how trivial the issue is”—a loud burst of laughter from her husband prevented Irene’s taking exception to this—“but so many little details strike me as wrong at the Cottage. One gets a sense of things going to seed. Is it the servants? Mysterious accidents happen. Take that business of Enid’s portrait.” His eyes sociably met her own, but she brazened it out. Cousin Irene wasn’t to be trapped that easily. His hope now lay, Francis divined, in making her see him no longer as an enemy by letting her see him, more vividly yet, as a fool. “I’ve already noticed,” he went on, “how disgraceful the food is! Haven’t you? Why, the meal last night …”

  He realized gratefully that he could speak the truth. The food was bad. Cooked for false teeth, served without wine, of an almost studied pallor (jellied broth, fish in a bland sauce, boiled potatoes, big yellowish beans), and cooled by its journey up from the kitchen in the basement, their dinner had had a quality of disinvolvement, like dishes served on the stage. An illusion of food. At the end had come a custard, pale, frightened, a virtual Mélisande of a custard, proving to Francis that Mrs. McBride must have planned the meal. Or worse, that nobody had planned it, that it represented some languid daydream of Loretta’s, fat and black, over her sunless ovens. It wasn’t a meal, he told Irene, that Fern would have let pass. But Mr. Tanning had eaten it; no food tasted right to him, he said.

  “… and not only the food, Irene,” Francis was warming to his subject, “but you know perfectly well it’s the kind of house that must be kept up. Last night I didn’t notice, but in daylight”—this also was true—“I saw cobwebs! The piano keys are filthy! The next we know there’ll be chewing-gum on the underside of tables! Now that Fern’s gone,” he bravely drained his glass, “well, more than anything, he needs a woman in the house! I’m serious!”

  That did it. “A woman!” Irene stared at him as if he were mad. “Excuse me,” she said mechanically, “I must get back to my guests.”

  They had wandered into a neighboring room which by now was beginning to receive some of the overflow. Francis made his way back through the crowd. “I deserve another drink,” he said under his breath.

  What tickled him first was to have put these things to Irene, beside whose house the Cottage fairly glistened. Everywhere at the Cheeks’ were signs of squalor and neglect. Francis had noticed, even during the early stages of the party, filled ashtrays, fallen petals, surfaces streaked with dust. His impression now, after a second drink, was of some allegorical dwelling of Sloth. Irene must have reasoned that only the first ten or twelve guests would blame her for the filth; whoever got there after would hold those early arrivals responsible.

  But the need for a woman at the Cottage—that had been the delicious touch! All by himself Francis began to laugh. And when Lady Good put her hand, still gloved, upon his arm, he led her into a corner and made much of the whole conversation. “I mean,” he finished, “what we now see at the Cottage is the result of a relatively short spell of celibacy. Unless, of course, it’s to be felt as the first trace of Irene’s influence—‘She comes, she comes! the sable Throne behold Of Night primeval and of Chaos old!’ Just think what the years will bring?” He treated her to a comic vision of Mr. Tanning left to the mercy of servants well-intentioned but forgetful, every month or so, of yet another minor chore, until a time when the sight of mop or dustcloth should arouse in them, like an object in a dream, only some puzzled inkling of its original purpose.

  “When you come to Jamaica,” Lady Good said mildly, handing him her empty sherry glass, “you will see—put that down somewhere, will you, dear?—that we live in quite a shabby old house, Ned and I.”

  Francis turned red. “At least now you know,” he flung out a hand, “what becomes of me among these people! I take their tone, I’m not myself! As if I cared about cleanliness, or houses, or who sleeps with whom!”

  “Don’t you, Francis?” asked Lady Good, interested.

  “No I don’t!” he retorted. “It bores me. In Rome I lived for a year in a big bare cheap room with no heat, and I loved it. I had mice, what’s more.” He could have gone on arrogantly to admit that he hadn’t, either, slept with anybody while in Rome—but here he checked himself. He didn’t want to appear too eccentric in Lady Good’s eyes.

  “Ah Francis,” she breathed, “you’re very young. The way one lives, externally, doesn’t matter …”

  His eyebrows went up; had he said otherwise?

  “… though, to be sure, in Benjamin’s circle—oh why” she broke off, “am I at this silly party? Benjamin’s talking business,
he has no need of me! Neither do you, so run away, leave me! Talk to that pretty red-haired girl.”

  It was as though she had been chilled by the thing Francis hadn’t said, a moment before. She gazed wearily over the crush. The sun, fallen behind trees, no longer did its best for colors and shapes; these blurred into something like the dusk of sensibility itself.

  Just then, however, she brightened. “I meant to say, I had such a jolly talk with Charlie Cheek! I’d never credited the man with that much charm. Look at him now, will you—laughing, chattering away!”

  “Perhaps we must start drinking ginger-ale.”

  Lady Good considered his empty glass, “I think that Charlie Cheek is grateful to me,” she said a bit smugly, “for taking up Benjamin’s time. I’ve sent Irene back to her own hearth.”

  “Except that for that to be the case,” smiled Francis, “Charlie’d have to be fond of Irene. Is he? Now, I can see him fond of you and grateful to her for not standing in his way.” In Francis’s mind this kind of perception, facile but forced, often passed for a subtle view of things. It didn’t impress his companion.

  “Don’t talk nonsense.” She raised her voice above the incessant din. “Unless I’m greatly mistaken Charlie worships Irene. Why shouldn’t he? She’s most attractive.”

  “You see,” he cried, shaking his head, “already they’ve corrupted you! Must you call her ‘attractive’?”

  “Well, she’s far more so than I, to a certain type of man.” Missing his point, Lady Good grew more and more distant. “It’s true I don’t see her beauty, but then I expect I’m not a certain type of man ….” She trailed off inaudibly before getting a grip on herself. “As for a woman at the Cottage,” she then declared, “it seems to me, Francis, that the Cottage crawls with women. Besides, there are a dozen right in this room who’d do anything to keep house for him. I met a Mrs. Sturdevant—”